The Deputy Chief Executive/Director of Corporate Services presented a review of the pilot process for allocating You Decide funds via a form of participatory budgeting. The pilots took place across all the area forums. Findings indicated that this process benefited the community by enabling additional services to be delivered in local communities, by involving residents in decision making and by enabling residents to have a greater understanding of the costs of services and associated choices. It had also provided departments with an additional intelligence source to help understand local needs and deliver services accordingly.

At Council on 2nd March 2009 it had been agreed for the funding to be maintained at £260,000 which was £20,000 per Area Forum, with the continuation of an additional £20,000 each for the Youth Parliament and the Older Peoples Parliament.

Resolved – That

(1)  Departments identify services that can be offered 'for sale' based on what is possible each year.

- Use quantitative questionnaire as in 2008 to include locations and postcodes of where services are requested.

- Decide location of chosen services using information from questionnaire by liaising with departments to deliver selected services in each forum

(2)  The Area Forum Chairs Group consider best practice for the operation for You Decide participatory budgeting.  There are a number of different models that could be adopted. The evaluation process has shown that participants want a greater level of involvement in the decision making process so this should be considered when developing the process for operation.